


A Change in Perspective

by Anarchyinplasma



Series: Life and Times of a Risen [6]
Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Battle of the six fronts, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 13:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10309556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarchyinplasma/pseuds/Anarchyinplasma
Summary: Arcturus reflects on his change in gun and cloak.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this sitting around quite a while, agonised over posting it but I've tidied it up a bit and I think it's ok. All comments are welcome.

The city was still bustling with life when Arcturus arrived back from Felwinter Peak, despite it being midnight. Lines of neon chased each other through the narrow streets below as he banked on final tower approach, giving him a good look out of the window of his ship, the Comitatus, won in a poker game from a Monarchy hunter with too loose a grip on his betting habits and no idea that other hunters could count cards. (Arcturus himself had no allegiance to anyone other than the vanguard, he'd been around long enough to remember the factions at their inception, when they were parts of a greater whole, so he knew what they were like under all the pretenses, but it paid to have friends in deep with the powerful people).

A tower tech raised a hand in greeting as he exited the ship via the front ramp, choosing to avoid all the hustle of the guardians who beamed in directly to the front entrance. He waved back and continued onwards, stopping to leave his keys with Holliday and check in for a service while he was back for a couple of days. He stopped her short of adding modifications to the engines though. He didn't need a promotion from “ludicrously fast” to “there is a mosquito shaped hole in my teeth”.

He exited the hangar with a somewhat forlorn gait as he made his way along to Banshee to drop in First Curse. The exo’s jaw dropped when he saw the state the gun was in.  
“What did you do to it? Stick it in a lava flow?” Arcturus grimaced.  
“Not intentionally.” He replied. Looking anywhere but the old exo. Banshee sighed.  
“This is gonna take me a long time, maybe a month or two. But I can get it done, I'll ping you when it's ready.” Arcturus thanked him and left a generous tip of a thousand extra glimmer before venturing to his final destination within the tower itself.

“How can I help you?” The unmistakable voice of Eva Levante drifted through her alcove as she took note of his footsteps. “Mr. Arcturus” she greeted her oldest customer enthusiastically upon seeing his face, enthusiasm which was quickly toned down when she took in the state of his gear. “What did you do?” Arcturus sighed, looking down at himself. He had to concede, he looked a bit of a mess.

His chest plate was pockmarked with bullet wounds and scarring from energy blades, and the Kevlar weave holding it in place was torn and fraying, one of his shin guards was missing entirely, the other was bisected by a diagonal line, held on only by its straps. One gauntlet was writhing with corrupting shadows, the other was stained with blood after beating a splicer to death with his fist after becoming weaponless, the cloth wrappings of his boots appeared to be holding together by sheer force of will, soaked with blood, oil, and water as they were, and his cloak was hanging forlornly from one clasp, swaying gently in the breeze. The only thing that wasn't immediately compromised was his helmet, though even that was missing a lot of paint and a couple of side panels.

“I think perhaps it is better I do not ask, hmm?” Eva questioned him while clearing a space on her worktable for him to lay out his gear, which he did after Callahan had replaced it with some spare pieces, oddly, his old gear from his risen days, still pockmarked with scars and glancing hits from those first days of lawless living. He didn't relinquish the corrupted gauntlet, it wasn't in bad nick, and he needed his light to eat away the corruption. Eva didn't comment as she totalled up the damage.  
“Come back in two days. I will have it ready for you.” Arcturus thanked her profusely and handed over what felt like half his bank account out of thanks, before heading out to the vaults for his final tower stop.

He stopped in the main courtyard, next to the towering pillars of digital storage, and punched his access code into a terminal.  
>110044 accepted, please select items for transfer

Arcturus hit the search button, typing in a reference number  
>21031998

An inventory and cataloguing number appeared for the item in question, along with a checkout box. He hit accept, confirmed Callahan had pulled the gun, and proceeded to the logout screen.  
>Session terminated  
>Session inventory:  
>One item withdrawn, ref. 21031998 “Hawkmoon”  
After a moment, the screen cleared, and was ready to accept it's next user. Arcturus set off on his way to his rarely used cityside apartment, he contemplated adding a vermilion stripe to the gun. Then remembered that it already had one.

As he sipped a welcome cup of tea in his small city centre apartment (not even the apocalypse could take the tea out of an Englishman’s diet), he reflected on precisely how the gun had earned it's vermilion stripe.

\-----

A storm rolled across the skies, blanketing the battlefield in a thick haze of cloying rain as the Fallen poured fire at the city's walls. The walkers amongst the masses of ground troops dropped shell after shell upon the battered masonry; yet still, the walls held. At the base, lines of guardians stood, facing head first the innumerable hordes of alien destruction rolling towards them. Each of them engaged in a fight for their lives, battling two or even three Fallen at once.

Arcturus' knife sprang from his vambrace and into the palm of his hand. He batted aside the marauding arm of the fallen captain in front of him and thrust the blade hard at its ribs. He felt it bite at the crevasses in the armour and dug the fingers of his other hand into the chestplate of his adversary for purchase as the alien attempted to shake him off, feeling the knife’s serrated edge scrambling for grip in the film of blood coating the Fallen’s clothing before it finally slipped in and nicked the arteries in the chest. Blood sprayed from the gaping hole and coated Arcturus' visor in thick crimson as the captain collapsed, adding it's vital fluids to the mire of blood and mud the risen's feet struggled to find purchase in. An explosion echoed in his ears and the sky became choked with soot, obscuring the near melee under an impenetrable blanket of darkness and smog as a fallen war engine collapsed several metres away, billowing the smoke from the massive hole in it’s cabin.

A rocket went off directly to his left, leaving a dull, pounding sensation in his head and a high pitched ringing rebounding about his ears for a few moments before anarchy once again reigned supreme on the battlefield. Charging guardians surrounded him, and he realised the rocket had given them a hole in the lines to mount a counteroffensive. He started to charge, feet desperately struggling for the few scant seconds of traction the muddy hellhole of the battlefield was prepared to give up, and was almost immediately brought up short.

Lying in in the mire in front of him was Jayne, her veridian armour was cracked beyond help, deep gashes tracing wicked lines across the once pristine surface; blood poured from the sharp puncture wounds in her left side. Worst of all, she was clutching the shattered remnants of her ghost to her chest.

Arcturus knelt at her side, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood. She grasped his hand and gently pulled it away from her wound. The other went up, pulling her helmet off and letting the blonde hair contained within flow over her shoulders like a waterfall of molten marble. Arcturus pulled his own helmet off, clattering into the mire beside him with a splash as he put his arms around the woman he'd waited three hundred years for. She smiled at him, and he caressed her face with his right hand, even as she pushed the handle of Hawkmoon into his other.

“Nevicata’s gone, Arcturus” she murmurs, cradling the shattered remnants of her once snarky, sarcastic, and wonderfully vain ghost to her chest as her vital fluids continued to blanket the earth around them, the greedy muck eagerly swallowing up her blood. There are tears in both their eyes, her sapphire gems peer at him through hazy vision, his own eyes sting with hot moisture.  
“Take Hawk” she murmurs in his ear as he pulls her closer. She presses the cannon more aggressively into his hand and he grasps the handle firmly, feeling her relax. They both know she's going to die.

“I may have been the one in med, Arcturus, but we both know there's no coming back for me from here.” Her eyelids flutter as she desperately tries to keep them open. Arcturus shakes his head, frantically searching for a solution both of them know he can't find. Her sapphire eyes bore into him, begging him. “Arcturus, please,” she whispers, “put me out of my misery.”

He knows what he has to do. He kisses her forehead once, gently, and whispers a final   
“Goodbye, sweetheart”, before bringing Hawkmoon into her side and pulling the trigger once. The gun screams as it discharges the round that would seal both their fates. It's a clean death, there's no pain, but the proximity of the barrel means the blood explodes outwards, drenching the weapon, Jayne collapses in Arcturus' arms, cold, lifeless, but at peace. Her blood soaks Hawkmoon as Arcturus goes limp, crying tears into the hair of his once more lost love as the cheers of the guardians around him signal the conclusion of the battle.

\-----

Arcturus woke in his apartment with a start, spilling his three-quarters drunk tea all over the carpet at his sudden switch in position. With a sigh, he went to make another.

In his mind, a woman with sapphire eyes smiled at him again, oh so briefly from beneath a haze of timeworn memories and tears. Arcturus glances at his cloak-stand in the corner, draped from it is hers, it’s torn, frayed, stained with the muck and grime of that old battle, but her tribute design to the legendary Six Coyotes is still clearly visible, and the rich material it was cut from still flows voluminously from its hanging place.

Maybe, Arcturus thinks as he regards the cloak, it’s time for a slight change in style.

\-----

Arcturus arrived at Eva Levante’s small corner of the tower two days after dropping his gear off, wrapped in Jayne’s old cloak, Hawkmoon on his hip, and not expecting miracles, he figured she’d have patched the more serious holes, redone some of the stitching, and sent him back out to the plaguelands with a good luck and a puncture repair kit in case things got really bad. He was certainly surprised.

Every piece had been restored to perfection, the vambraces, greaves and chest plate gleamed under a fresh coat of paint. The stitching was immaculate, every weave neat, crisp and expertly hidden under the plates of light armour. Somehow, she’d even managed to repair the slight damage to his helmet (in addition to a refinishing of course), an exceptionally complex piece of tech that had been given to him by an old student, Tevis had called it the Graviton Forfeit, he had a penchant for catchy names.

For the first time since his unpleasant trip down memory’s bombed out alley back to Six Fronts, Arcturus genuinely smiled. Callahan picked over the gear, and, when satisfied, put the old risen gear back into storage and replaced it with his newly repaired stuff, eventually, Arcturus slipped back on his previously corrupted gauntlet, now cleansed, thanked Eva, and watched as she went to the back of her shop to collect his old cloak.

As she started to pass it to him, Arcturus gently declined; pressing the fabric back into her arms. The old seamstress looked incredibly confused, until he explained himself.  
“Eva, as a token of my gratitude. All the work you’ve ever done for me is represented somewhere in that cloak, keep it, for your wall or something.” Still, Eva refused, but Arcturus would have none of it, he ran a finger over the expert hemming of his new cloak, before more firmly depositing his old one into Eva’s arms.  
“Keep it Eva, I have another one of yours now, so it’s not like I downgraded.”

The old seamstress appraised his recent outfit change with a keen eye.  
“It’s certainly one of mine, was this hers?”, she questioned, an air of caution in her tone. Arcturus nodded sadly, grief in his eyes. Eva nodded decisively.  
“Good, she’d want it to be used.” Arcturus snorted.  
“She certainly would, I figured it was a better way to keep her with me.” Eva draped the cloak she now possessed on the back of her chair, and gave a brief hug to the man she had come to regard as a grandson of sorts, before shooing him on his way, with a parting riddle to check the inside of the collar.

Curious, Arcturus lifted the folds of the collar to find the digital storage tag, with a physical copy of the reference number.  
>29041998  
He smiled, spirits lifted, and continued on his way to the hanger, passing Banshee’s stand to pick up some more specialist rounds for his colleagues back at the peak.

Banshee took one look at him, then another at the cannon on his hip, before declaring, in his characteristic muffled and gravel-ridden voice  
“That won’t do.”  
“Eh?” was the first, ineloquent thing out of Arcturus’ mouth, Banshee simply repeated himself, in that same, gravel-ridden voice, Arcturus shook his head, but passed the cannon to the expert exo for inspection when the he held his hand out. The old gunsmith turned it end over end, examined the chamber, and then clamped it in his small work vice.

“Gun needs work.” muttered the weaponsmith, already focussing on the task he’d set himself. “She ain’t ready for what you want. Leave your ghost here and come back in an hour, I’ll get her cleaned up a bit.” Arcturus started to protest, but Banshee shooed him away again and set to work. Callahan floated out from behind Arcturus’ shoulder, appraising the smith for a moment before turning to his risen.  
“Go talk to Cayde or something. Come back in an hour like he said.”

Arcturus, having had his weapon confiscated, for lack of a better term, spun on his heel and made his confused way down to the vanguard halls to enjoy a game of cards, and annoy Ikora for an hour.

He returned an hour later, forty glimmer poorer (Cayde had always been a cheat), to a very unexpected sight. 

Banshee had replaced the worn rubber grips with wooden panels, he’d stripped the cracked and half gone black paint from the frame, leaving a natural, beautifully grained metal surface gleaming in the midday sun, with some fine engraving as an added touch. He’d even swapped the chamber side, since Arcturus was a lefty. The sights had been redone, as had the laser mechanism; the barrel, however, had been left untouched, to give a very personal vermillion stripe.

Arcturus fished another hundred and fifty glimmer from his already slightly dilapidated bank account and placed it on the table before immediately picking Hawkmoon from her resting place in the vice. He gave the sights, the laser, and the grip a once over, everything was as it should be. Callahan interrupted his musings.  
“I convinced him to leave the barrel, figured you’d like it as it is now.” Arcturus spun Hawkmoon into it’s holster with a smile on his face, it slid in with the whisper of polished metal on leather, as it had the day it was made. He thanked Banshee again and inquired after his other gun. The exo merely growled and placed a box full of First Curse’s parts on the bench with a clang, along with several newly machined parts, including a new barrel. Arcturus decided it best not to inquire further.

Everything sorted, he made his way back into the hanger, tracked down Comitatus, made a quick check to ensure Holliday hadn’t added ripped the engines off and given them the power boost she was always raving at him about, and set off back to Felwinter Peak.


End file.
